Introduction
The beginning of first semester started off with a struggle. I was definitely feeling a lot of stress with the transition to college. But as every week passed, I have become more comfortable with myself and my classes. CODES121 has definitely been my favorite class this semester because of the overall atmosphere and assignments. I really enjoyed writing the Multimodal Essay and making the Rhetorical Analysis video. I think I have excelled with my writing this semester, I am super proud of my Multimodal Essay. I could improve with the reflections, which will not be difficult as long as I break up them into paragraphs. I definitely need to improve on my public speaking, its definitely something I am still not fully comfortable with.
Now that the semester is over, I would say that it was a struggle, but a manageable one. I got very sick for a week and I feel like it took me quite a while to recover for a few of my classes. I feel like everything did however come together in the end, just with a lot of stress. This first semester of classes I feel like I had more group work than I did in all of high school. I definitely feel like I was a driving force, not necessarily a leader of the groups but more of a motivator. In my small groups communications class, my group’s communication skills were awful and I often felt as I had to bring us all together to actually get work done. But in the end, I feel like I pulled my life back together and I am proud of the work I got done this semester.
Goal 1 (20%)
Develops clear, innovative central messages with significant supporting materials.
Multimodal Essay
I would definitely say that I worked with this goal the most with the multimodal essay. The essay was about my struggles with growing up gay. As the essay goes on, I talk through the different stages of my life and overall accepting myself. This essay is something I am super proud of, since I have never written about myself in such a deep way for other people to read. I really enjoyed the aspect of including images to help tell the story, and I feel as if I did it in a very effective way. If I were to do it again, I would probably just change the topic, but I am super proud of what I wrote and wouldn’t change a thing.
Reparative Justice Map
Another way I worked with this goal is the Reparative Justice Map. It was a rough start for my group, we really did not know what we were doing. But in the end when we finally got a grasp of our topic (Community Development), it was smooth sailing from there. My part of the project was mostly focused on specific locations, like I did two shops, a restaurant, and a park. For each location I explained the significance and impact of that location on Tower Grove and how it helped improve the community.
Goal 2 (10%)
Evaluates texts’ scholarly significance to apply reading to other contexts or issues.
For the first half of the semester I feel like we have not done much reading. We have obviously done reading assignments but I haven’t been able to really connect them to anything else.
Now that the semester is over I can say that there is one very specific example of a reading helping me out with another assignment. The reading of The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson. I specifically connected this a lot with my reparative justice map. Johnson talks a lot about the terrible history of St. Louis and its early “development” of destroying black neighborhoods. Overall the reading was just helpful with our project’s focus being community development in Tower Grove.
Goal 3 (30%)
Helps collaboration move forward by articulating the merits of alternative ideas.
To be honest, we have not had much collaboration this semester. We have had one small group presentation, but it was extremely easy and straightforward. Other collaborations we had were for peer reviewing each others work for the multimodal essay and rhetoric analysis video. For both instances, I felt as I had helped the people I reviewed for, with just making their projects a little more concise. This is an area that I definitely need to work with more for the rest of the semester.
Now that the rest of the semester happened, I can say that my first statement is no longer true. I feel like all I did this semester was collaborate with other people, and I do not even know where to start with artifacts for this. I had several collaborative presentations.
Reparative Justice Map
This is the document I made the slides for the Reparative Justice Map on. This project required a lot of collaboration, especially due to our groups long lasting lack of motivation until the week it was due. Sophia and I had to round up our group at the end to actually get the project done and decide who would do what. Overall I am proud with what we ended up with, and I think the people who actually participated did a great job.
Iris Center Showcase
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18LIW935GcWp0gvvs19cJ480xGRF0Qon0Qvkt8akgafE/edit?usp=sharing
This was another collaborative presentation that took a lot of practice. My group Kadynce, Kasey, Evitt, and I all worked together to make our slides and overall just make our presentation sound smooth and professional. We practiced many times together to make sure everything was just smooth. Overall I would say we succeeded as a group and I was very happy to get this presentation over with.
Goal 4 (20%)
Demonstrates a thorough understanding of context, audience, and purpose.
Digital Project 2
This video was very new for me, I have never made a video for a class before. Before we started everything for this, I barely had an idea of what rhetoric even was, nor did I know how to edit a video. Next time I think I would rather do a topic that I know less about just for more of a challenge, I knew a lot about Taylor Swift going into it and it honestly made it easy for me but also boring for me to make a video with her as a focus. I did however enjoy the aspect of the video being for a specific audience.
IRIS Center Showcase
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18LIW935GcWp0gvvs19cJ480xGRF0Qon0Qvkt8akgafE/edit?usp=sharing
This presentation was very scary for me. I hate presentations in front of my classmates, so I hated the idea of a presentation in front of several scary adults as well as my classmates. It took a lot of reworking to make myself sound professional and overall a lot of practice to not sound or look nervous. Overall I am happy with my presentation but I did not look up from my note cards much. Kadynce, Evitt, and Kasey all did great as well and we all helped each other prepare and calm our nerves before the presentation as we were first. Our presentation was about Indigenous Knowledge and therefore the lack of it in the Herbarium and its catalogue.
Goal 5 (20%)
Accesses information using effective, well-designed search strategies and appropriate sources.
Source Analysis
For the first half of the semester I unfortunately do not recall needing to do any research techniques for this class. I have exhibited this trait the most with the source analysis assignments for my research team. Each week I search for a source with a general relation to St. Louis and/or Reparative Justice. At first it was a struggle just due to the fact that I was not sure what I was looking for exactly, but I have found several sources that I have been able to connect to our class.
Reparative Justice Map
This project required a lot of research. For my slides of the project I had 4 different locations I had to find extensive information on and how they improve/develop their community. Specifically for Ritz Park I found a website for South Grand Improvement district which had a lot of information for my slide as well as a few of Sophias. We scrounged through every single website about community development in Tower Grove and put together our slides.